sensitive energy issue to have access to my staff, to be background in 

 that issue at the earliest stage so the reporter will be able to handle 

 that- story and 15 others that may come up later on. 



One of the things that we've tried to offer, and last spring and 

 summer was a critical time for it, is the availability of the economists 

 and engineers and analysts within the Energy Office for the media to 

 work with. How do you deal with, for instance, the gasoline and diesel 

 supply situation? There were tremendous risks involved last summer as 

 state governments and the federal govenment tried to say, "What should 

 we tell the public in terms of the gasoline situtation?" One big headline 

 about the second week of May of 1979, that gasoline supplies are 

 threatened in the Denver metropolitan area on the front page would 

 have been self-fulfulling. A run on the market would have pulled down 

 the whole gasoline distribution system in that 5th to 12th of May period 

 that we really worried our way through. Fortunately, on the 7th of 

 March the governor agreed that we should begin to tell people that 

 things may get tight and that they should take a conservative attitude 

 toward driving and start feeding soft information about what might 

 occur. And at the same time, we invited the media within the state in 

 to give them every fact we had about the complicated supply and 

 distribution system in Colorado. There is so much information on the 

 energy supply situation as it relates to gasoline and diesel and so many 

 different opinions going on in the country that you can throw any kind 

 of headline you want against it. We wanted to make sure that the full 

 range of what was known and what was not known was available at a 

 very early time. 



Interestingly, the major news stations in Denver which cover the 

 whole state--television stations, the radio stations and the print 

 media--came in, spent a long time figuring out the federal reporting 

 systems and how the allocations system worked in Colorado and what 

 news releases were all about so that not one story was gotten right. 

 But a series of over 30 stories across the summer were substantally 

 treated correctly in terms of gasoline supply and distribution. And I 

 believe that it is that level of candor that is what made that work. We 

 couldn't have gotten to the people the message that things might be 

 difficult, that they're not critical yet but begin to pull back a little on 

 what you're using in gasoline, without the cooperation of the television, 

 radio and print media of Colorado. We could not have done it 

 ourselves. We don't have the credibility to do that. But the media, 

 thank God, because of the first amendment protections they have, did 

 have the credibility to do that and basically saved our necks by 

 responsible reporting. They took the time to get it right. Bill Ritz, 

 who was here with you two days ago is one of those people and there 

 were many others who went to that kind of trouble to make sure that 

 an unfortunate headline in a newspaper with a quarter-million 

 circulation didn't blow us clear out of the tub as happened in southern 

 California with gasoline supplies. 



A couple of other things in terms of the administrator's 

 responsibility as he deals with and works in the milieu of the media and 

 the public. It seems to me today that there are so many controversial 



